Clear except for two contrails, fuzzy with age. Another scrap of gray paper has fallen from the old hornets’ nest, its lines blank as ever.
bald-faced hornet
12/21/2020
Solstice. The porch is littered with scraps of paper from the old hornets’ nest—a prized spot for wrens to spend long winter nights.
4/9/2020
Curtains of rain blow this way and that. The crack of branch. Bits of gray paper come flying loose from the old hornets’ nest under the eaves.
4/29/2019
A half-warm morning, with the sun half out. I notice that birds have made so many holes in the old hornets’ nest, it’s now Janus-faced.
3/20/2019
A Carolina wren yells from the balustrade while his mate rummages around inside the old hornets’ nest. The sky slowly turns white.
3/1/2019
Something has been ripping into the old hornet’s nest on the porch ceiling: pieces of its gray paper litter the fresh snow. A wren flies in.
9/13/2018
Foggy at dawn. When I open the door, a Carolina wren zips out of the old hornets’ nest under the porch roof and disappears into the lilac.
12/16/2017
The yard is crisscrossed by fresh tracks of animals. A chickadee lands in a fretwork spandrel and peers intently at the old hornets’ nest.
10/22/2017
There’s a new hole in the hornets’ nest—flying squirrel? The scarlet oak we transplanted from the woods years ago is starting to color up.
10/8/2017
The goldenrod is all brown, but each breeze sprinkles it with yellow from the woods. The last hornet returns to her ghost town of a nest.
9/30/2017
Cloudy and cold. Gusts of wind try on bespoke garments of yellow leaves. The hornets are still flying, tough as the nails in their abdomens.
9/29/2017
Bright morning after a cold night. A hornet drops from her nest, hitting the porch floor with an audible tick, then flies unsteadily away.
9/25/2017
The front-porch hornets have dwindled; the new queens must’ve pupated and gone. The remaining workers soldier on like unRaptured Christians.
9/6/2017
I cede the porch to the hornets and sit under the portico. The view: a garden full of weeds, a least flycatcher landing briefly on an aster.